The Gap of Rohan
KEYnote: Had a few people ask why the elves stayed or why there are more of them in Middle Earth and it's because of the Entwives who literally expanded the forests.
There is magic in the world and things many of the elves have never seen before. They sense change is coming and that their people can endure it.
Chapter 12 - The Gap of Rohan
Lord Elrond steeled himself as he closed his eyes and reached out to Galadriel and Celeborn.
Galadriel's presence skated along with his mind, "You are troubled."
He sighed, opening his eyes to see the Lady as if she stood before him in his halls.
"Can you reach Thrandrial?" he asked.
Her brows rose.
Celeborn shook his head, "He will not listen to any plea beyond his borders, Lord Elrond."
"We cannot speak without him, for it is the King of Mirkwood who must stand accused."
"Accused of what?" Celeborn asked.
But Galadriel had already closed her eyes, and minutes later, the King of the Green Wood stood in their midsts.
He held in himself the beauty of his forests, but the starlight was dimmer within his eyes than in either his son or daughter.
"Why have you called me?" Thranduil demanded.
Elrond spoke without delay, knowing the King would use any reason to break the connection between them.
"News of your wife has reached my halls. She resides among the living in the Undying Lands among the Valar."
The King's shoulders fell, "I…" He turned away from them, speechless in his grief, in the relief of knowing the other half of his heart was at peace.
They shared that now, Elrond's wife, Galadriel and Celeborn's only daughter, mother of his twins and Arwen, had too retreated to the Light of the Valar.
The king seemed to regain his height, he turned back to them, his heart of stone seemed to harden further, "How come you by this news? Has someone returned from the West?"
Elrond hoped it would shield him against what was to come, "Your daughter, King Thranduil, resides within my house this day."
King Thranduil crossed the space between them, proving that he was indeed tall enough to tower over Elrond. "You will send her back to me."
Elrond winced, taking a step back, "She has forsaken you, King Thranduil."
"Forsaken?" Galadriel echoed, her interest clearly peaked.
"You've met her," Elrond said before Thrandriul could threaten him once more.
"When?" the King asked through his teeth.
"Thorin's Company. She said that you imprisoned her with her comrades. She said she came to Middle Earth on the back of a firedrake, and that she travelled to the Lonely Mountain with dwarves and that she values their friendship more than her own place among our people." By the end of his statements, his voice had grown strident, accusatory, and it was Elrond who was stepping forward. "She is the youngest elf in Middle Earth, and she is afraid of her own people! She ashamed of us!"
King Thranduil had paled, and something like fear shone in his eyes.
Galadriel stepped forward to stand beside Elrond, her voice was deceptively calm, "Speak, King of Mirkwood who inherited the woodland that was once the Greenwood, known for its youth, not spiders."
Thranduil swallowed hard, "I did not know."
"You cannot refute it?" Celeborn asked, shocked. "Your own daughter?"
"I did not know!" Thranduil shouted. He looked away, his silver hair falling over his face, before repeating, almost to himself, "I did not know."
"How many young elves could there have been for you not to have noticed?" Celeborn asked. "She wouldn't be two hundred years old yet. Thorin's journey to the Lonely Mountain was many decades ago."
"She appeared human," Thranduil said softly.
"I believed so as well," Elrond admitted. "For I let her pass unhindered. Nor for that matter, did Gandalf the Grey. My adopted son noticed, for he is human and saw that she was not. The halflings saw it, the dwarves did not at first, but as the years passed, she remained youthful… and the glamour began to fade."
There was silence to this statement.
"She was born in the Undying Lands?" Thranduil asked.
Elrond winced again, "Perhaps born, but Luna Lovegood was raised in the Lands of Exile, among men. Hers… was not an easy life."
Thranduil closed his eyes and tipped his head back to gaze upon the stars of a realm that was not his own. "I will spend the rest of my days making amends to her. I will travel to Imladris myself."
Elrond shook his head, "She has joined your son, she rides out with the Fellowship of the Ring."
Thranduil turned and nearly spat at him, "She is a child."
"Perhaps, but she is a child that has seen war, war as men wage it, she has suffered and she has seen long years alone. She had no kin in the Lands of Exile. She knows not our tongue or our history. Yet she has travelled from the Shire to the Lonely Mountain, on her own, many times over these recent years. She is the friend of dragons, even tamed Smaug before he was slain."
"So you think I have no say over her fate?" Thranduil asked.
"I think it is lucky she accepts Legolas as her brother," Elrond countered. "Nowhere in Middle Earth is safe as long as the Ring prevails, if the Valar will it, Legolas shall return home to you with her at his side."
Galadriel shook her head, "She is the youngest, in a time where no elfling has resided among us."
Elrond ran a hand over his mouth, and all he could say was, "She is a friend of dragons, and a new Istari has come from the West. Harry the Black, who journeys with Luna wherever she goes. Haldir and Legolas journey with her also, and that, for now, must be enough until she accepts her place among us."
Galadriel nodded, "For now."
"Tell my son–" Thrandriul stopped himself. "Tell my son to stay safe."
oOo
"We must go south, to the Gap of Rohan," Boromir said.
Estel smoked on his pipe looking as though he would disagree but said nothing.
"We will try the mountain pass," Gandalf said.
"They won't survive the cold," Harry said, gesturing to the hobbits. "Nor can we go through the Gap of Rohan. North or south of that point will give our enemies enough time to catch up with us. Our only hope is speed and stealth. If you have allies in Rohan, then we can pass through as safely as we might anywhere else."
"I agree," Luna said, and to Gandalf's frown, added, "We travel to Mordor, there is no safe path. But the mountain cold is too much for the hobbits, and Moria is lost."
Gandalf sighed, "Strider?"
"I will follow whichever path the Ring Burier so chooses," Estel said.
Frodo bit his lip, looking at the two elves and dwarf, "What of you three?"
Haldir and Legolas exchanged a look, before Haldir answered, "The cold does not affect us, but I must concede to the wisdom of others for the capabilities of the halflings."
"The cold is no bother to me either," Gimili said. "But I wouldn't know how to keep the halflings safe. My father said they ended up going through the troll halls when last they passed over the mountains."
"We could carry them on our backs," Harry said. "I know Luna is capable of carrying such weight, though it would lessen how much food we could take."
Gandalf, Haldir, and Legolas looked rather perturbed by the idea of an elven maiden carrying another adult being on their back for a hike up a mountain peak.
"If we go south, we can ride horses," Luna said. "If stealth is not possible then speed we must take. My mare could easily bear Gamili and an elf. The rest of us can pair up with the hobbits."
Frodo nodded, "That seems like the best plan."
Gandalf sighed, "Then that is what we will do."
There was no joy in their departure, the elves were silent and watched Luna with mournful eyes.
They took eight horses.
Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn and Frodo, Boromir and Samwise, Gandalf and Pippin, Harry and Merry.
Two of the horses they rode in the elven way, without saddle or pack. The decision was made in the case that one of the horses fell ill or lame. With Luna and Haldir riding them, they would remain fresh but for the miles they crossed, miles which these elven horses were more than willing to embark on.
Three of the horses were Luna's, thus from Beorn's herd, beautiful as they were strong. The others were Elrond's, and the ones Haldir and Luna rode were descents of Elledan's prized stead, built for speed not burden.
The days passed with little note, the Ring Wraiths did not catch up with them, and they over the land too swiftly for any enemy to fall upon them. Most days were filled with the chatter of the hobbits, with the odd story from Harry who was far more willingly than Luna was to speak of the Lands of Exile.
Her quiet on the topic of her past life clearly disturbed her brother and Haldir, though she pretended not to notice. More concerning to her of course, was Frodo's growing paleness and frugalness with which he spoke. On a bad day, he was prone to speak not but a single word.
In fact, she did all she could to avoid discussion with the two other elves, something that earned her endless disappointed looks from Harry.
When Harry finally lost his patience, it was a night at which the four hobbits had fallen asleep on her.
"So, Prince Legolas," Harry began cheerfully. "Tell us about Mirkwood, I've only been through north to see the entwives, ents, and entlings, and Luna has truly only spent time in your dungeons."
Legolas and Haldir flinched.
Luna just glared at her friend, wholly unamused that she couldn't get away.
Legolas began a story about how the elves of Mirkwood came to be wild, and separate from the High Elves, of some of the misadventures their people became so widely known for.
Luna said nothing, made no move, as if she could not hear him.
Gimili, to his credit, made no ill remarks, though he chuckled at perhaps not the politest of moments.
Legolas did not speak after that night, and it was only then when Luna saw how increasingly depressed he was becoming at her coldness. While Legolas wasn't as talkative as Gimili or the hobbits, he was notably younger than Haldir, both in how he conducted his scouting and how he spoke to others, more prone to listening to the content than the tenor of someone's speech.
As Legolas's interest and curiosity of the places and people around him dimmed day by day, she accepted that it was her doing.
Haldir, his part seemed to hover more around Legolas, quietly spurring him to remain watchful and in the moment, as if he were a captain training a new recruit.
After another week, when Harry had begun to stop speaking to her, did she finally seek her brother out? She found him one early morning, when the stars still twinkled and the dawn was far from reach.
Sighing to herself, Luna sat down beside her older brother, where he sat taking the midnight watch.
"I'm sorry," she said softly.
Legolas shook his head, "You have nothing to apologize for."
"She was your mother too, she left us both." It was not fair of her to take that out on him.
But Legolas did not call her on her rudeness, "It should not have happened."
"She left because he refused to help the dwarves."
He turned toward her a bit sharply, "And he refused to help the dwarves because he was having a child, the last of an age. He would not risk our people, he would not risk not being able to see you born. Had our mother not run, had she told anyone of her intent, it would not have been allowed."
Luna sighed again, "If I had not been raised in the Lands of Exile, I would not have been who I am today. I would not have known Harry, or the dragons, nor met Bilbo and Thorin Oakenshield, and neither of us might have stumbled upon the entwives. This is how it was meant to be."
Legolas caught her gaze, "If that is how you feel, then why are you so ashamed to be an elf? Why are you so ashamed to be my sister?"
She turned her attention down into the valley cast in murky shadows, though nearly as clear beneath the silver of a moon as it would have been beneath the sun in her eyes.
When she answered, it was with her true heart, "I was very bad at being human, at being a witch. I have always been myself, but I don't know what it means to be an elf. I don't want to fail at that too, nor am I certain I want to learn what it means to be royal."
"Our father will love you, as I have come to love you. There is nothing you can do to make that untrue."
"He didn't love me when I was myself," she countered. "Thorin loved me before and after what I was became apparent."
"Father hates Thorin for the same reason he loves you, if not for his feud with the dwarves, our mother wouldn't have left and you would not have been lost to us."
Luna rounded her shoulders, "How can I trust a man like that?"
Legolas sighed, "Luna…"
"You think his actions are excusable?" she demanded.
"I don't think you realise how the years have passed for him. He is younger than Lord Elrond, but he is older than the One Ring. He has seen the rise and fall of dwarves of their own hands. And unlike our brighter cousins, we are more tightly tied to grief outside our realm, for border disputes have persisted across our history, with all the people of Middle Earth save the wizards. You've seen what dragon-sickness is, Thorin's grandfather went mad with greed and damned his own people. That was his doing and his family and people allowed it."
"That is not his people's fault," she protested.
"Perhaps," Legolas said. "But was it our people's duty to die for such greed? The Dwarves of Erebor established such wealth that they drew a drake from the North, and the Dwarves of Moria dug so deep to wake an elemental from the heart of creation. Even if the dwarves would have accepted our help, where do we draw the line. Do we dictate who has the right to rule? Who will be their next King or simply rule them ourselves? If a friend dwarves you claim to be, surely you know how that would end."
Luna winced, war, that would lead to war, they both knew it and she even knew for certain that Gimli and Thorin would conclude as much.
Still…
"They died on the road, as refugees," she said, repeating what Thorin had told her so long ago.
"Such tragedy plagued them for mere decades," Legolas said. "And they had kin to turn to, it was the dwarves' own doing that without the foundation of their gold and the Arkenstone that the dwarves scattered as a people and would not acknowledge a king. Thorin never needed the gem to prove his right to rule, you must know that as well."
As she had personally broken the stone, she had indeed known that.
He continued, "Decades are nothing to an elf as old as our father. Thrór was mad with greed, while our father retreated from the lands beyond our borders at your conception. Any claim on the treasure of Erebor he surrendered, knowing that for the next hundred years, he would care for nothing but you and our people."
"And when he thought I was dead?" she asked.
Legolas looked away from her, "I did not know our mother was with child, but when she left… I lost them both. He has never been the same since the Queen left, and the only reason he did not take his own life —let himself fade— was because he had no way to know where she had gone. He would not die without knowing, and he would not go West without her."
She took his hand, for she knew what it was to lose both her parents, the ones who she had loved and been loved by.
He wrapped his long fingers around her comparatively small hand, holding onto her as if she had offered him a line in a torrent.
"He knows now," she said more softly. "What will he do?"
Legolas looked into her eyes, "I do not know, but I suspect, nothing until he is able to make up for his trust passes against you. I do not know if he could forgive our mother, no matter how much he loves her still. Perhaps for leaving him, but not for giving you to the Land of Exile. There are no words in any language to describe such a crime."
"Will you forgive her?" Luna asked.
"No," Legolas said without hesitation. "I loved her once, and I thought she loved us, but even on my father's worst days, he would never be so unfeeling nor so cruel."
Luna thought that over, and the conclusion she came to?
That she was right to trust her brother, and that Harry was right in urging her to confide in him.
"Will you forgive her?" he asked after a time.
"For her compassion for the dwarves, yes. For everything else—" she squeezed his hand. "I will not forgive her for abandoning you either, you are as much her son as I am her daughter."
Legolas tugged on her hand —she allowed herself to be pulled into a hug— and she hugged him back even more tightly.
Only Harry knew how afraid she had grown, how the fear of the passing days, of how fast time and life spun on seemingly without her.
Years were as days to her, and memory as vivid as the rising sun setting fire to the clouds. So vivid that the present moment left her unbalanced or disturbed by the harsh contrast between a known event and an unknown future.
Thorin was reaching the end of his days, as was Bilbo, and she was afraid that she would blink and everyone she loved would be gone, leaving her with nothing but a memory.
As alone as she had ever been.
Harry was content with life, content with death, but Luna felt as if she had barely begun.
Knowing that it was a species thing, that she had no control over, just as she could not turn back the clock for her friends.
But short of murder, Legolas was someone like her who would not leave her.
From what he had told her of their father, she no longer knew what to think of him anymore.
However, even within her own mind, she did not fail to realize that she had been referring to King Thranduil as 'their father.'
oOo
Haldir felt a bit bad when he woke for the watch change and ended up listening to two of Mirkwood's royals finally speak their hearts.
He was relieved that neither seemed to forgive the runaway Queen who had injured her family so grievously. Whatever King Thranduil's faults, Legolas was right to set the blame at his mother.
Elves were seen as perfect, but they weren't. They were as flawed as humans, only slower to act on their shortcomings and more watchful of each other's actions while humans still struggled to merely make do in the world.
Haldir could only thank the Valar who had interceded somehow in bringing Luna back home.
Legolas held his little sister against his chest, cradling her as if she were the elfling she had never been allowed to be.
It broke Haldir to think that she had seen war, been made to kill, and had been tortured when she had been so innocent. By the time he had met her at the Battle of Erebor, she had been forced to mature beyond her years.
Yet that it all seemed to make her more compassionate, wise, and brave was both incredible and humbling.
Haldir was down the slope from them and scuffed his boot on a root.
Legolas opened his eyes, and without letting go of his sister, signalled to him in acknowledgement, before closing his eyes once more, his posture relaxing.
Haldir disappeared back into the line trees, taking over the watch so Legolas could enjoy the moment.
The Prince hadn't just lost a mother and a sister to this travesty, but his father and his own childhood as well.
Yet not a century after their meeting, Legolas and Luna had united the entwives and the ents, helped take Erebor back for the dwarves, and Luna, in particular, had made a treaty of sorts with the drakes of North who guarded their territory jealously. So jealously that when Sauron's forces had begun to spawn, their presence had been completely erased in the North, so much so that Moria was as far north as the enemy could hold.
By the Valar, the 'Rangers of the North' had begun patrolling south of the Shire for the lack of evil that haunted their territory.
It amazed Haldir that despite Sauron's imminent return to the realm, in some ways, with the drakes reproducing in the north, the ents expanding outward new gardens and sapling forests from Mirkwood to the Iron Hills, the dwarves uniting, the halflings protected in the Shire, the rangers of Arnor also prospering, and even the humans rebuilding in Dale, Middle Earth hadn't been this active since the First Age.
The true question was whether the elves would remain and rebuild their own havens, whether they would begin marrying and having children of their own?
For the world was turning, balancing over a precipice. Since the ents and the dragons, no elven boat had set sail to the Undying Lands.
It was Haldir's hope for his people that they would choose the happiness of this new age and not abandon it in the face of this next challenge.
For surely, if the halflings of the Shire could be roused from their gentle hills and march to scale, the elves could look beyond memory and revel in the mysteries this world had yet to reveal to them.
oOo
AN: Thoughts, tuataras, or feedback, pretty please?